A Furrow by Hand, A Gardenia for Me | Grandma Kouzi

The gardenias are just beginning to bloom in the mountain ravine. My flowers have finally opened.

June 16, a month ago, marked the anniversary of Evil Man Valley. By 2025, it will be the fourth.

The modest patch at the front of the house provides more than enough for self-sufficiency, while the ravine at the back—once wholly unfit for human dwelling—now carries the scent of blossoms. I must thank these scarred hands, which over four years have painstakingly shaped this gully by hand, gifting me gardenias.

◉ Thanking these hands for gifting me a gardenia (the left image highlights the colour difference around the wrists).

I. A Gardenia for Me

For a food lover, edibility is the only truth that matters.

In June 2021, I arrived here dreaming of self-sufficiency, ready to break new ground and farm. The central task of the first year was preparing the land. My expectations were modest: the soil only needed to support crops. Anything would suffice, provided it was edible.

Breaking the ground proved far harder than I had imagined. It took four months, and only by autumn did I finally clear a patch fit for cultivation. Vegetables came first: an initial wave of fast-growing leafy greens, followed by hardy crops for the winter. Rice, grains, and fruit trees would wait for the spring. Gardenias were never part of the equation. They held no place in my vision of this land; they are, after all, a rarity for those from the north.

In late spring 2022, while jogging at dawn, I spotted white blooms along the roadside. After a thorough assessment—looking, sniffing, and checking every detail—I confirmed they were the legendary gardenias, specifically the single-petal kind. There’s no point passing by roadside wildflowers without picking them, so I took to gathering blossoms along my path every day.

◉ Gardenia season: the daily exploits of a flower thief.

Later, I dug one up with some trepidation to try growing it, half-expecting it to fail. Yet locals assured me the plant was “tough.” Here, that’s a compliment, meaning it’s robust and unfussy. Experience bears them out. Take osmanthus, for example: it’s a common roadside tree in the south, but in the north it will quite willingly drop dead in front of you. Different soils nurture different blooms.

A while after that, yielding to the experimental spirit of any proper foodie, I decided to try eating it myself. The verdict? Gardenias are not only edible, but delicious.

Pick the petals, air-dry them until halfway dry, let them release their excess moisture, then preserve them in sugar to make flower jam. That jam can then be turned into gardenia flower pastries, which outshine the familiar rose versions on the shelves, reigning supreme at the top of the culinary food chain.

Achieving self-sufficiency with gardenias takes at least three years, often longer.

II. The Three-Year Rule for Self-Sufficiency

Although two harvests a year are possible in Fujian, my own growing experience has taught me that most crops run on a three-year cycle: the first year is a victory simply if you recover your seeds; the second year continues the tuition fees; only by the third year does everything finally get on track. Achieving self-sufficiency in vegetables comes first, followed by staple grains. Transitioning from “eating what’s on hand” to “having whatever you fancy” typically takes three years.

Fujian’s climate is humid and rainy, making it a lost cause for most oil crops that prefer dry conditions and dread dampness. I tried sunflowers (both oil-bearing and ornamental varieties) to no avail; flax also failed; and I didn’t even dare to attempt sesame. Red-skinned peanuts are a local signature crop here, but their oil yield is low, so I grow a variety from my hometown called *Xiaobasha* (Little White Sand). Clearing and preparing the land in 2021 dragged on too long, causing me to miss the autumn peanut planting window. In 2022, I planted both spring and autumn crops, barely breaking even on seed. By 2023, the harvest was sufficient for eating and saving seed, but still short of what’s needed for pressing oil. Yet, there was a pleasant surprise: after pulling the autumn peanuts, I sowed rapeseed as green manure. This spring, a golden sea of flowers yielded an unexpected harvest of roughly 25 kg of rapeseeds. Oil self-sufficiency is no longer an issue.

My bee colonies expanded from two to six, leaving me with more than enough honey. By this reckoning, salt is the only commodity I still must purchase. The next modest goal is gardenia self-sufficiency.

During gardenia season in Valley of the Villains, petals are strewn across the dining table, bedroom, and workbench. It appears haphazard, yet conceals a quiet, deliberate care. A subtle fragrance lingers wherever I tread, and the tiger within my heart is thoroughly content. The mouth and the body require good sustenance, while a heart that harbours a tiger needs to recognise flowers by their scent. Give me a single gardenia, and I shall not forget myself. In a hectic life spent racing to fill the belly, it is easy to forget the quiet little soul that resides beyond mouth and skin. The gardenias in the valley are a gift I present to myself.

◉ The ravine as it stands today, featuring the plants I’ve cultivated. From left to right: one-year-old wild ginger lilies, duckweed, bulrushes, water hyacinths, wild ginger lilies, and ornamental bananas.

III. Capacity and Boundaries

16 June 2022 marked my first anniversary at Evil Valley. I made a wager with a neighbour: for a full year, I would do all the work myself without hiring a single hand. The stake was ten *jin* (about five kilograms) of Ruyan fragrant rice.

By then, I was a fourth-year ‘veteran farmer’. My track record comprised two years of rice cultivation in Taiwan, a year of alternating vegetables and rice in Gutian, and a year breaking new ground in Evil Valley. In Taiwan, my rice paddies and vegetable plots totalled roughly three *mu* (half an acre). Apart from mechanical puddling and harvesting, I handled everything single-handedly and found it thoroughly rewarding.

This experiment at Evil Valley came to an abrupt halt on 13 October 2022. The rice had matured and needed to be brought in, but I was laid up with a stubborn fever that refused to break for a week.

The most painful loss was not the ten *jin* of Ruyan rice, but having to concede the limits of my own capacity.

That year felt like one continuous cycle of injuries. Scratched hands and knocked heads were minor inconveniences; the real dangers were tripping with a heavy handcart and being flung sideways, or straining to lift something heavy only to be crushed in the chest by a falling door panel. Fortunately, they were all close calls without lasting harm. Vehicles I normally kept under control and weights I could usually manage repeatedly got away from me without warning. It was clear that my ambitions had simply outstripped my physical limits.

Back in Taiwan, a novice farmer could manage this single-handedly, thanks to the flat, fertile Lan-yang Plain’s efficient and standardised irrigation and drainage systems, as well as a comprehensive network of supporting services. Evil Man Valley did more than test physical stamina and skill; it was a comprehensive trial of decision-making, judgement, and adaptability. I had to learn far more than the myriad techniques required to break ground and cultivate crops. I also had to acknowledge the limits of my own capabilities, and accept where my power simply ran out.

The eastern edge of Evil Man Valley bordered a rural lane, while a mountain ditch ran along the west. During the land-clearing phase, my use of the ditch was entirely pragmatic. Piles of unearthed bamboo roots and scrub trees were simply pushed into the nearest gully, saving on waste removal. Just how much debris was dug up? As the image below shows, the field bund on the right marks the original boundary of the land. The steep slope beyond it was gradually filled and levelled during the clearing process, yielding a plot roughly three metres wide.

◉ Riverside topography. The elevated field bund on the right marks the land boundary, while the strips of peanut plots in the centre were all formed by filling with debris from the land-clearing.

Originally, both banks of the gully were thick with bamboo and grass tall enough to conceal a person. The bamboo roots never seemed to end, the grass was endlessly resilient, the injuries kept coming, and the costs just kept mounting. The alfalfa seeds alone cost over two thousand yuan.

The initial plan was to sow alfalfa in the uncultivated ground beyond the fields and vegetable patches. Once established as the dominant cover, this perennial, deep-rooted grass would retain soil and moisture, naturally suppress weeds, and provide highly nutritious forage. It is the protein king of all grasses and yields truly exceptional steamed dishes and grain mash.

The first batch of seeds weighed sixty jin (30 kg) and cost over a thousand yuan. Germination was promising, but I had overlooked the weed seeds already dormant in the soil. The alfalfa could not compete with the stubborn field-edge grasses and was all but choked out. I cleared the weeds and sowed more alfalfa, repeating the weeding again and again, yet the grass still dominated. Later, I hired an excavator to dredge silt from the bottom of the gully and spread it over the surface. I assumed the silt would be free of weed seeds and that the alfalfa would finally take hold—but I was mistaken. I had forgotten the wind, drifting in and out unseen, carrying fresh seeds with every breeze. Weeding not only wore my hands raw but dampened my spirit.

◉The top image shows the gully in its original state: bamboo on the left, grass on the right, all standing far taller than I do. The bottom image shows the gully as it is today.

IV. A Compromise Between Dreams and Reality

When manpower fell short, I had to call in the excavator. In Taiwan, excavators are known as ‘guai shou’ (monster hands). But a monster hand is still a hand, after all.

I learned from veteran farmers in Taiwan that keeping field ridges as vertical as possible makes weed control much easier. Straightening the hillside a bit would not only help keep weeds at bay but also tame this ditch in the process.

The original plan sounded brilliant: scoop out the years of accumulated silt from the ditch and use it to fill the slope. Straighter slope, narrower ditch, deeper water, more farmland, fewer weeds, plus room to grow lotuses and raise fish – achieving multiple goals at once. But in reality, the ditch renovation became a bottomless pit. 2023 turned out to be the ‘Excavator Year’ for Evil Man Valley, seeing no less than six different excavator operators come and go.

There’s an old saying: ‘Slop can’t be plastered on a wall.’ The runny mud from the ditch, once scooped by the excavator and dumped down the slope, would immediately slide back. At best, it clung as a thin layer to the hillside, only to wash away after the first rain.

The mud wouldn’t stick, but I wasn’t about to give up on the ditch. So I kept calling the excavators back, repeatedly slapped in the face by the stubborn sludge. It took until the fifth operator to finally crack it: first, scrape dry soil from the cliff face into the ditch to build a wall about a metre wide and over a metre high, almost vertical, between the overhanging slope and the gully. Then pack the ditch mud inside, creating a brand-new planting area.

Once the mud issue was sorted, I built two small dams, each over a metre high, creating two planting areas of just over a hundred square metres each. Off to buy water plants: foxnuts, water caltrops, water chestnuts. I bought the most lotus roots, both starchy and crisp varieties. I wanted to turn this mosquito- and fly-breeding muddy ditch into a dream lotus pond: white lotuses blooming on the north bank, red ones on the south.

Unfortunately, after a whole year of frantic planting, not a single lotus appeared. Nothing else survived either. Probably because it was raw, unweathered soil, and besides, the earth dams couldn’t hold water properly.

The 2023 construction season ended in late December with my surrender to concrete dams.

I’ve always resisted cement, trying to avoid hardening the ground and minimising human intrusion. Initially, both dams were made of earth. Of course, I knew that not only does soft mud not stick to walls, but yellow earth can’t withstand erosion either, so I took precautions. I drove vertical and horizontal wooden stakes into the dam foundation. The whole structure was a layered ‘mud concrete’ of alternating dirt and camouflage netting. On the surface, over the water channel, I laid double-thick plastic sheeting; elsewhere, I planted grass to anchor the topsoil above and stabilise the dam below.

This idea, much like growing lucerne, was all dream and no reality. Fujian gets plenty of rain. Every heavy downpour swept away the top vegetation and washed away the surface soil. I’d refill the dirt and replant after the rain, only for another storm to hit, until I finally bowed to the concrete dam.

V. Intentionally Cultivating Wildflowers

With the concrete dams in place, I no longer had to worry about floods or dam maintenance. I went crazy planting. Just on lotus alone, I spent over a thousand yuan. Everything sprouted, but not a single lotus leaf survived – my lotus pond dream was ruined by ducks. Neighbours upstream and downstream started raising ducks. New to it, they lacked experience; the duck coops always had endless leaks no matter how tightly they were boarded up. Roving ducks were everywhere. The moment young lotus shoots just peeked out, they became duck lunch.

◉ Roving ducks making frequent uninvited visits.

But I can’t say 2024 was a total loss. What I lost in lotuses, I gained in wild ginger lilies and coreopsis.

Both wild ginger lilies and coreopsis grow wild by the roadside at no cost. The ginger lily rhizomes came from a stream in a neighbouring village; the coreopsis was a chance encounter on my morning runs.

Coreopsis burns like fire, a bright, mood-lifting gold. Wild ginger lily is pure white and intensely fragrant. I hold each of them in equal affection.

I planted the coreopsis slightly higher up on the ditch bank, level with the road. The ginger lilies, loving water, I planted in a row along the waterline. Both are perennial plants and naturally thrive in the local environment. By the second year, a single plant can grow into a whole bush. Now there are already small patches of golden flower carpets along the ditch. Next year, they’ll merge into continuous blankets. In three years, there will be two walls of wildflowers flanking the banks.

Woody gardenias require more time than alpine ginger and coreopsis. Single-petaled or double, large blooms or small, the daily minutiae of transplanting, taking cuttings, and tending to each plant are mundane yet protracted. I live within the life of the flowers, and the flowers live within mine.

VI. The heart of the flower lies hidden within its core

Before the fourth anniversary in 2025, I brought the infrastructure project for Evil Valley to its final chapter. Out front, there is finally a gate, drawing a deliberate boundary between the outside world and my daily life. Behind the house, spanning the valley from east to west, I built a waterside pavilion. The gate and the pavilion serve no productive purpose; they are not essential farm infrastructure, but a reward I give myself.

Evil Valley may be small, but the work never ends from dawn till dusk. Only the scorching midday heat forces a pause. Summers in Fujian are long and sweltering; the waterside pavilion offers a cool refuge from the intense heat. A hammock strung a little higher, facing west, reveals a landscape awash in the golden hue of coreopsis; a rocking chair set lower, facing east, looks directly onto my gardenia hillside. After the day’s labour, I collapse into the hammock or the rocking chair, leaf through a leisure book or nothing at all, ponder useless questions like “why we live” or simply think of nothing.

◉The waterside pavilion in the valley is the coolest spot in Evil Valley during summer. A small pile of gardenias can be seen on the table top in the image below.

I am fond of Sartre’s words: “Whatever hellish environment we find ourselves in, I believe we all possess the freedom to shatter it. Should one choose not to, they are freely remaining within it; that is, they are freely placing themselves in hell.”

Each person is bound by their own lot. It may be fate, formless and elusive; or it may be life, the mortal body sustained by daily meals. To settle this physical vessel in such a way is both shaped by unseen forces of nature and moulded by my own two hands.

I have spent four years cultivating a life lived behind closed doors, with my face turned to the sky. The pavilion in the valley is a gift to myself, the cherry on top of the cake.

◉Evil Valley has finally gained a gate of its own.

The two slopes flanking the pavilion are planted thick with double-petaled gardenias. Those with large leaves and broad petals stand tall, while those with smaller foliage creep close to the ground, forming a verdant carpet. The earliest gardenias I planted required one year of rooting cuttings, a second year for transplanting, and by the third year, the survivors bloomed. Though only a handful thrive at present, I am in no rush. After each blooming season, I prune and take new cuttings, gradually expanding them piece by piece. I am certain that one day, my own hands will have planted a hillside blanketed in flowers.

Beauty to behold, fragrance to breathe—this simple joy is no easy thing to exchange for a king’s throne.

Foodthink Contributor

Kouzi

Steadfast walker of the fields, village brewer. Full-time food lover, part-time farmer, amateur writer.

Unless otherwise stated, all images are provided by the author.

Edited by Tianle